We needed scientists for THIS?

Rap mogul Jay-Z and his pop star wife Beyonce welcomed a baby girl at Lenox Hill hospital two weeks ago. The news quickly outpaced other top stories on Twitter, helped along by the announcement of her name: Blue Ivy Carter, just the latest celebrity moniker to inspire a collective groan and the Twitter hashtag #NamesBetterThanBlueIvy. Rock star kids named Apple, Moon Unit and even God, beg the question of how a strange name influences a person’s life. Scientists at the Max Planck research school recently published a study proposing that “unfortunate names” can lead to unfortunate lives. Asawin Suebsang is an editorial fellow at Mother Jones Magazine, and he has his own take on whether or not we really needed science to tell us that a bad name can be an unfortunate thing, indeed.